Based on the systematic textual and discursive analysis of numerous American and German rap songs, the study shows how linguistic features such as the use of varieties, semantic fields, narrative structures and forms of conversation function within rap music lyrics of different communities of practice.

Ch.1-3: Connect views of cultural theories on globalization with empirical linguistics and music theoretical knowledge. Processes of cultural globalization and localization of popular music are considered, as well as the importance of the local in rap. The appropriation of the genre in Germany is seen as a cultural encounter caused by globalization in which deterritorialized identities and solidarities are constituted. Local adaption processes of global circulating popcultural genres are characterized by ambivalences and hybridities as a consequence of global and local alliances. Rap texts are influenced by oral speech culture and African American verbal and cultural traditions. Important concepts of hip hop's culture and language ideology are introduced. The part conludes with an overview about current knowledge in the field.

Ch.4: Provides the theoretical grounding and developes a frame work for the contrastive linguistic analysis of about 225 US-American and German rap songs. Starting with an overview about the data and criteria, the description continues with different linguistic research methods which are connected to an analyzing model, consisting of eight categories. They form the basis for the empirical analysis and are interrelated.

Ch.5-12: The empirical part of the study, beginning with genre typical rhyme structures. Ch.5 illustrates the connection between rhyme, lexicon and style and discusses the function of language crossing and stylistic mixing in the context of rhythmic demand and rhyme forces. In Ch.6, the occurrence and frequency of the use of AAVE in rap texts and of colloquial as well as of regional speech and dialectal traces in the German data are discussed. The phonological, grammatical and lexical influence of AAVE on rap's lingo is examined. Ch.7 consideres specific semantic fields which form the basis for the performance of different roles in rap. The common occurrence of technical and evaluative expressions in both languages demonstrates the globally accepted reference system of rap and hip hop culture. Ch.8 deals with the identification and linguistic realization of genre typical metaphor domains and is based on cognitive metaphor theory. Metaphorical expressions of varying sources can co-occur, and numerous conceptual metaphors from the American data appear in the German data in a very similar fashion. In Ch.9, characteristic genre roles and self performances of rappers are examined by taking into consideration features of variational analysis and the use of certain themes and lexical means, social categorizations and discourse strategies. Specific role images are exclusively occurring within the American data or are taken up only partially by German rappers. Ch.10 shows the wide spectrum of terms for persons, groups and types to categorize the self and the other. In Ch. 11, rhetorical devices, discourse markers, greeting formulas and other verbal routines in rap are examined. Ch.12 discusses gender specific differences in the frequency and use of certain speech act patterns, such as directives, compliments, interruptions and silencing devices.

Ch.13: Views the results of the previous part against the background of globalization and localization processes. The adaption of globally available linguistic resources and their integration into local cultural frames reveals some of the ambiguities of deterritorialized identity formations.